Playing on IGS as cal and KGS as ticktock.
I'm still a beginner (well, AGA 14k at least, but ranks below 10k really aren't meaningful) probably because I waste a lot of time doing things that beginners shouldn't do (like studying pro games) and I don't spend enough time on fundamentals like life&death.
Go came into my life slowly and insidiously. It just kept cropping up. My first exposure to Go was in 1994, when I worked at a company that did some software internationalization work and Japanese translations. Some co-workers were exposed to go that way.
Eventually I read Kawabata's Master of Go, which is a great novel, and I liked it a lot.
Later on, I ran into some people playing turned-based go servers, but they warned me that I don't want to start playing because it's addictive. So I ignored it for a few years.
I ran across O. Korschelt's book The Theory and Practice of Go and got quickly frustrated with the problems that were written out in coordinates. So I put it aside again for a while.
In the meantime, Go showed up in places such as the book A Beautiful Mind and the movie Pi, and in books about the history of mathematics. I got a copy of TurboGo registered for an IGS account but got confused by the obscure commands and random challenges for super-fast games, got discouraged again, and forgot about it.
It wasn't until I moved to an area with a lot of local Go players and clubs that it really started to stick. But I still read way too much and don't get in enough games, so progress is slow.
I lose most of my games these days due to massive and repeated reading mistakes in combat. My favorite form of study (pro games) provides me with superior positional judgement for my rank, so I'm usually ahead in the fuseki and early middle game, but once my opponent notices this he'll usually start a complex fight to shake things up and win. If fact, if he/she doesn't start a fight, I might win by 30-40 points. I also lose games frighteningly quickly if early fights start and go terribly wrong (resigning after 30 moves). To remedy this, I've started working on tsumego a lot more, and during games I just try to stay awake and always be reading, especially during my opponent's think time. Previously, I would space out during my opponent's think time, or just rest, or maybe look around for the next big move, but now I'm trying to be more active and read out tactical sequences following the next big moves. It's too early for this change to show much improvement.
Some updates: maybe I am improving after working on tsumego so much. The description above is no longer completely accurate, and I sometimes now win with a bit tactical whoop-ass. I'm seeing less of a difference in my playing strength vs. single-digit kyus. I sometimes see mistakes low-dan players make (confirmed by even stronger players), though that's not enough because my own mistakes are much greater. This is all unstable, though, and I have to make it more consistent.